Clearwire Investor Steps Up Battle Against Sprint

Crest Financial has escalated its attempt to prevent Sprint from acquiring the remaining shares of Clearwire. Crest, which owns about 3.9% of the company, has hired a proxy solicitation firm in order to help it sway other investors to deep-six the deal. Crest maintains that Sprint undervalued Clearwire and its spectrum by billions of dollars. Crest also accused Clearwire's directors of breaching their fiduciary duty in securing the best price for the company. "Crest is determined to do whatever it can to stop Sprint's efforts to extract for itself the value of Clearwire's trove of wireless spectrum and to harm minority shareholders and the public interest," said Crest in a statement. Sprint is seeking to buy the 49% of Clearwire that it doesn't already own. Softbank, which is in the process of acquiring a 70% stake in Sprint, limited Sprint's offer for Clearwire to $2.97 per share, or a total value of $2.2 billion.